SPEECH BY LORD SAINSBURY FOR THE SCIENTISTS
FOR LABOUR MEETING, 06 DECEMBER 2001
GREEN TECHNOLOGY: POLICIES & PRIORITES
FOR THE FUTURE
Thank you for your warm welcome. I am
delighted to be here today to speak to Scientists for
Labour, a Group that has done so much to help promote
science – and to promote the Labour Party – in recent
years.
It is particularly enjoyable to be addressing
you today, at what I believe is the Group’s first meeting
since the Party secured a second term in Government. I
know that there are a huge range of policy and political
issues preoccupying everyone’s minds at this time, nevertheless
I do think it is important to remember what we have already
achieved, both as a Party and as a Government.
In 1998, following our first spending
review, we increased the budget by 15%, the biggest increase
for any area of Government expenditure. Last year, building
on this, we added a further £725 million. This means that
the Science Budget will grow at an average rate of 7%
per annum in real terms over the current three year period.
We have also invested significant resources
in improving and upgrading our nation’s scientific infrastructure,
put new money into exciting new areas of science such
as genomics, e-science and nano-technologies, and have
sought to provide the resources to encourage the best
scientists from around the world to come to the UK to
undertake their research.
This is not to say that we have achieved
all that we should have, or that we can’t do more during
a second term – and indeed we must – but it is to say
that we have made a start. After years of decreasing investment
and neglect under the Conservatives we have now started
the process of rebuilding our science base, providing
the resources so that British excellence and expertise
– which has always been there in our universities, businesses
and laboratories – has a real opportunity to flourish.
And we are already starting to see the
results.
A recent survey showed that our policies
for promoting knowledge transfer are working – with the
proportion of Higher Educational Institutes research income
coming from business up to 12.3% last year, an increase
from 10.9% in 1995/96, and 199 new spin off firms being
created in the last year compared to a total of 338 in
the previous 5 years. And after years of seeing some of
the most promising and talented scientists leave the UK
we are finally starting to attract people back. I am also
sure we were all immensely pleased that we started the
21st century with Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt receiving
the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Let me now turn to Green Technology. What
are the Government’s priorities in this area and how do
we intend to use green technology and other scientific
developments to help our environment?
Let me begin by asserting one core fact,
science is not part of the problem when we are discussing
these issues rather it is part of the solution.
Too often policy makers, and the wider
public, have regarded science as the cause of environmental
degradation. I believe the opposite is true. We will only
be able to have a limited impact through behavioural change.
It is science and green technologies that will provide
the solutions to environmental problems facing our world.
Only by using our scientific expertise and technological
skills will we be able to deliver a sustainable future.
As you know, science is absolutely vital
to understanding, identifying and solving environmental
problems. By detecting change in the environment; diagnosing
why change is taking place; suggesting solutions, through
this diagnosis, for solving environmental problems; and
defining the boundaries of uncertainty in our understanding
of the environment and reducing this uncertainty.
Let me give an example. Strong fundamental science and
the development of new technologies allowed us to discover
the hole in the ozone layer. In the 1970s, Rowland and
Molina in the USA and Crutzen in Germany (who shared the
Nobel Prize 3 years ago), demonstrated that CFCs used
in, for example, refrigerators and aerosols, can cause
the breakdown of ozone when they disperse into the stratosphere.
This sounded alarm bells and led to discussions about
the need to phase out CFCs.
Then in the 1980s, Joe Farman at the British
Antarctic Survey, first produced unequivocal proof that
stratospheric ozone is depleted over Antarctic. The quantity
of ozone is now 40% of the levels in the 1960s. Similar
depletion is also occurring over the northern hemisphere,
with springtime levels of ozone down by 20%-30% in recent
years.
Farman’s observation, together with the
known chemical mechanism, were crucial pieces of evidence
that led to the signing of the Montreal Protocol on phasing
out CFCs. The replacement of CFCs has also relied on science
and industry to produce alternative solutions to refrigeration
and other uses.
So what has the Government done to address
this issue? Well, we have:
- Set a demanding 10% target for energy to be derived
from renewable sources by 2010, and backed this up with
an obligation for energy suppliers to meet this target.
- We have also set up three Faraday Partnerships
to help knowledge transfer in relation to the environment.
These measures have been combined with new steps taken
to promote new and renewable energy technology in buildings.
A new Faraday Partnership will bring together the countries
top scientists, government and businesses representatives
to ensure the successful integration of new and renewable
energy technologies into buildings.
- Another Faraday Partnership will seek
to facilitate research, training and technology transfer
for the remediation of polluted land and water by biological,
as well as physical and chemical, methods. Particular
focus will be given contamination in the subsurface
environment. This action should provide the UK with
a long term sustainable solution to cleaning up contaminated
land.
- We have also set up the Crystal Partnership
for Green Chemistry – the design of chemical products
and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation
of hazardous substances. I won’t say more as conscious
that Professor Clark will shortly be talking on the
subject of Green Chemistry.
- Although not always popular with industry,
we have signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and introduced
the Climate Change Levy. We have also put new funding
into the monitoring and modelling of climate change
through the Metrological Office and new Tindale Centre
- At the DTI we have initiated a new
Sustainable Development Strategy to set out an agenda
that will enable British businesses to raise competitiveness
and productivity without harming the environment. The
Strategy seeks to improve resource productivity so that
we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation.
It aims to achieve these ends through particular focus
being placed on spreading best practice and enhanced
industrial research capacities.
- Building on this, the Sustainable Technologies
Initiative, which is a joint DTI/ESPRC programme, will
provide £18 million over 5 years on collaborative projects
targeted specifically at improving the sustainability,
and the efficiency of material resource use, in UK businesses.
- NERC are at present reviewing the totality
of research into sustainable technologies – including
renewable energy – in the UK. The aim here is to identify
the strengths and weaknesses of existing research, and
to bring together the various research communities together
to create a more focused national research effort.
- We are giving industry incentives to
improve their impact on the environment. One example
of this is the Carbon Trust, being directly funded from
the Climate Change Levy. This has recently come into
effect and is the first programme in Europe that brings
together business and government to promote the take-up
of low carbon technologies. The Trust is backed with
significant resources providing up to £150 million annually
on programmes designed to reduce business energy use,
provide enhanced capital allowances for approved energy
efficiency measures and incentives for advanced R&D
into low carbon technologies.
And I think, like the scientific community,
business has an important role to play here.
The challenge of sustainability is to
turn what appears to be a threat to business competitiveness
into new opportunities, to create new markets, develop
new products, redesign processes and reduce the use of
raw materials. Of course, many businesses already recognise
this and have made environmental systems and green technologies
part of their mainstream business activity.
The shift to a more energy efficient and
environmentally conscious economy will also create winners,
with new companies and processes emerging to seize the
commercial opportunities presented by such change.
Already we have seen a new environmental
services market established – worth £335 billion. These
are substantial markets, comparable globally to aerospace
or pharmaceuticals – and forecast to grow to $640 billion
by 2010.
The market includes solutions to control
air pollution; contaminated land remediation; water, and
waste water treatment; waste management; environmental
services such as consultancy; energy provision; as well
as niche areas like noise and vibration control.
That is not an exhaustive list, but it
does illustrate the diversity of market demand. Many of
these needs, of course, arise directly out of rapidly
developing areas: such as countries in Asia, South America
and also closer to home in Central and Eastern Europe.
It is estimated that the UK’s environmental industry’s
share of markets is about 4%. This compares with 6% in
France and 8-9% in Germany.
So there is plenty of scope to gain a
greater market share. An encouraging sign, however, is
the percentage of exports in relation to industry turnover
which we achieve. The UK has 15-20%, Germany 20%, Sweden
14%, Japan 15-20% and the USA 10%. The DTI is keen to
work with the industry to raise its share of the world
market.
Here too the Government is helping with
the DTI and DEFRA joining together to set up the Joint
Environmental Markets Unit [JEMU]. JEMU provides practical
and financial support to companies working in green technologies
by helping them participate in international exhibitions
and by encouraging both outward and inward trade missions.
JEMU has also been instrumental in establishing a new
Innovation & Growth Team whose primary role will be
to identify new trends and emerging factors which impacts
on competitiveness, and to establish a vision for a future
environmental industry in the UK that would maximise exploitation
of opportunities globally. It will also be reviewing existing
environmental industry initiatives, examining the scope
for new ones, and bringing influence to bear on policy
and developments across a range of stakeholders in both
public and private sectors, which might affect the industry’s
future growth.
It is crucial, however, that the focus
of Government’s environmental policy making is designed
in such a way as to encourage and not stifle innovation
and technological developments. Often in the past, environmental
objectives have been met through rigid regulations and
whilst these can be effective there is a need to ensure
that these do not tie our hands when looking at new ways
to address established environmental problems.
So this Government is looking at a wide
range of policy approaches for the future, including economic
instruments and voluntary approaches. In developing and
using the full range of options at our disposal we are
seeking to ensure that innovation and the promotion of
green technologies remains at the heart of our environmental
agenda.
If we are to solve our environmental problems
we need to do excellent science and develop excellent
technology in the environmental field. We need also to
give the invisible hand of the market place a green thumb.
I hope what I have said this afternoon will convince you
that we are hard at work doing both.
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